Frankenweenie is Tim Burton’s remake of his own 1984 short film, an homage to the monster and horror movies of early Hollywood, and, above all, a cute story about a dead dog. Victor Frankenstein is a skinny, pale boy who lives in suburbia with his skinny, pale family among a neighborhood of other weird-looking people. His best and only friend is his dog, Sparky, who looks kind of like the Target dog and acts like any smart animal in a Disney movie. Well, he’s not smart enough to stay out of the road, as he gets run over and killed as he’s fetching Victor’s first home run ball (side note: Victor, you’re a natural athlete, all 38 pounds of you). Refusing to mourn, Victor, after learning in class about how electrical currents affect muscles, constructs a ramshackle laboratory in his attic right under the nose of his delightfully oblivious mother and ends up reanimating Sparky’s corpse so that he’s good as new…almost (e.g. his tail falls off, he’s got some cool scars, bugs fly in and out of his body, etc.). But then, when the neighborhood starts to find out and gets their hands on Victor’s foolproof technology, let’s just say things start to spiral out of control.

The many throwbacks to films of the past make the movie enjoyable on surface level alone. There’s the humpbacked assistant Edgar, who’s not quite as funny as this Igor from Young Frankenstein but is somehow uglier. There’s Victor’s Vincent Price-esque teacher Mr. Rzykruski, who pushes Victor to utilize science as much as he can, even though he’s the one that seriously needs braces. Even Burgermeister Meisterburger, the antagonist of the Rankin-Bass stop-motion special Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, gets an homage in the form of the town’s surly mayor. The stop-motion, black-and-white look of Frankenweenie both retains Burton’s typical visual style and lets it stand apart in its own weird atmosphere. Many of the sequences, notably Victor’s first reanimation scene, are amazing in showing off Burton’s imagination, making it clear that he’s still got it.

But the real triumph of the film is its story. Simple in some ways, complex in others, Frankenweenie is able to tell a taut, heartwarming story that in the end comes down to the love of a boy and his dog. No matter what you think of Tim Burton’s odd visual style, you can’t help but be moved by the characterization of Sparky, who has the same adorable, infectious quality that Wall-E, Abu, and Toto all have. Yes, it’s dark (though not so dark). Yes, it’s in black and white. Yes, the people all look emaciated. But if Burton changed all that, then it really wouldn’t be the same.

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